By SAMSON A. SHAIN, D.D.
_Rabbi, Shaarai Shomayim_
The Founding Fathers of communities in Lancaster County, as the Founding
Fathers of our Country at large, cherished the Bible as a guide in their
search for equal rights and justice, and especially freedom to worship
God as they had learned to worship Him in the privacy of their homes and
houses of worship. Giving scriptural names to their home and church
communities, accordingly, served to symbolize for them, the attachment
they felt for the liberty they were helping to proclaim in all the land.
Hence, one place our county pioneers called _Goshen_, land of plenty to
which God had led them. Another place they called _Bethel_, House of
God, wherein they could freely pour out their hearts in thanks and
praise and petition. Still another they named _Mount Nebo_, mountain
peak with an all-embracing view of their new Land of Promise. Another,
_Elim_, place of rest in the shade of one’s tree with none to make man
afraid. Still another, _Eden_, new garden home of delight planted by
them in partnership with God. Yet another, _Ephrata_, shrine of freedom
paid for by the labors of pioneer men and women, patriarchs and
matriarchs of God’s newly chosen people planted in the New Zion he had
appointed for them. In this same spirit, one, John Patton, gave the name
_Judea_ to the hill plantation straddling West Hempfield and Manor
Townships on the banks of the Susquehanna, between Columbia Borough on
the north and Washington Borough on the south, and warranted to him in
1774.
Lancaster County settlers, thus, chose Biblical names for their
communities in the spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers before them, as a way
of expressing thanks to God for leading them safely to these shores of
freedom; as a way of affirming faith that unless God built a house of
liberty, they labor in vain that build it, and as a way of making a
promise to labor mightily to preserve that freedom and bequeath it
unsullied to their descendants.